Amount of food to feed

I have 2 cats at my fiance's house. One is around 8 pounds, the other is around 12 pounds. Recently we have begun feeding them half each of a 5.5oz can of Natural Life or Nutro wet food per day along with 3/4 cup each of Nutro Complete Care Indoor dry cat food. I was just wondering if this sounds like it's about the right amount for them to be having or if I'm feeding too much or too little? I come from a family that has always free fed our cats so finding that "happy medium" is kind of difficult for me. Any words of wisdom would be wonderful. Thank you!

Personally I never go by what the bag says. It should be more of what the body build is. As long as the larger one is not hogging more food from the smaller one, its about right.

The bag gives the recommended amount for the AVERAGE cat - you have larger and smaller breeds. An "average" rex would be 5-7 lbs; an "average american sh would be 8-9 lbs; an "average" maine coon would be 14 lbs.

5.5 oz and about 3.5 oz dry is about right... I have yet to meet a cat on wet and dry that ate the guiedlines... my dog s dry actually states drop a 1/2 cup dry for every 6 oz wet... thus my 14lb girl gets about 8 oz wet and only a 1/4 cup dry ....

I've been very interested to learn that my crew seems to need less then I thought.

For a couple of reasons, I have recently started picking up any uneaten food after about 1 hr. I've been surprised that in doing this I am almost always throwing food away. (I keep telling myself to put less down but myself doesn't always listen so good...)

What I am putting down for each:

morning: 1/4 c dry - Raw Instinct plus either Wellness or California Natural
evening: 1/3 of a 5.5 oz can of wet (1 can split between the 3 of them) - PetGuard

They rarely eat all the dry or wet.

I've been picking their food up after an hour for about 4 weeks and have been closely monitoring their weight and only Zara has lost any and she needed to. In fact her weight was one reason why I started picking the food up.

I think with picking the food up I can determine how much they actually need. Leaving food down just encourages them to overeat.

BTW: Toby and Zara are 3 yrs old, Coco is 2 yrs old. Toby and Coco are high energy and Zara is a couch potato. They are all average size (9-12 lbs).

I have just switched to an all-wet diet and am actually still figuring it out. I have a 15 pound cat and a 25 pound cat. the 25 pound cat is about 10 pounds overweight (the vet said he is a big-boned kitty naturally) so I am desperately trying to get his weight down and keep him happy. The 15 pound cat is maybe 3 pounds overweight, so he could stand to lose a little too, and I heard this is the best way. Keep those carbohydrates low. I am trying Meow Mix, and I have been giving them about 3 cans each per day. These are small cans, only around 2.25 ounces I think.

I kinda think that they overshoot what you should feed them on the package because if you run out quicker you will replenish quicker therefore spend more money on their product. For example, Meow Mix told me I should feed 15 cans per day each cat according to their recommendations! There's no way!